The Ted Bundy Murders

A freezing night in January more than 30 years ago changed the sleepy college town of Tallahassee forever.

That night a man on the run from murder charges out west killed two FSU students and severely injured three more. Ted Bundy's first attacks came at the Chi Omega sorority house.When FSU and Tallahassee Police got the call that frigid Sunday morning, it didn't sound that alarming:

"I Got a call from FSU dispatch that two girls had been hurt in a fight at the Chi Omega house" says former FSU Police Sergeant Bill Taylor. But as Taylor and fellow FSU officer Ray Crew pulled up and went inside along with TPD's officer Oscar Brannon, they quickly realized it was much more.

A young woman named Nita Neary met them and said she'd seen a man run out the front door, a man she later identified at the trial as Ted Bundy.

Taylor and Crew started a search and were alerted to something upstairs.

Crew says, "I went upstairs and that's when I found the young girl, Karen Chandler, at the top of the stairs and she was severely injured. She was coherent enough that I was able to ask some questions. She said she'd been in the room with her roommate and had been attacked."

Her roommate Kathy Kleiner was badly hurt and incoherent.

Crew then went to Margaret Bowman's room:

"I opened the door turned on the light and observed the crime scene. She was deceased," says Crew.

Across the hall was Lisa Levy's room.

Taylor says, "The EMT's and I started working on her, trying to revive her, but it was too long since she had stopped breathing."

Lisa had been terribly beaten and sexually assaulted.

As the injured girls were rushed to the hospital, FSU, Tallahassee Police and Leon County Sheriff's deputies rushed to secure the campus and try to catch a killer, but Bundy wasn't finished with his attacks.

After leaving the Chi Omega house, he went just a few blocks away to a home on Dunwoody Street that had been made into two apartments. There he slipped into the quarters of Cheryl Thomas.

Cheryl's friend Debbie Touchton lived in the other apartment and says she heard strange sounds coming from Cheryl's side and when Cheryl wouldn't answer the phone, called police.

Debbie says, "I heard a very strange pounding noise. The house was up on blocks and it sounded like someone was underneath the house pounding."

Cheryl Thomas doesn't remember much from that night. " During the night I heard a noise, but I'd adopted a kitten so I assumed it was the kitten and just passed out."

Cheryl says she didn't wake up until a day or two later at the hospital.. her parents by her bedside.

That's when she learned the extent of her injuries. Cheryl says, "I was bludgeoned by a club that Bundy came through the window with, he fractured my skull in 5 places, broke my jaw. One skull fracture severed my hearing nerve"

She would never hear again in that left ear.

Bundy, meanwhile, was able to slip away that night. Three weeks later he raped and killed 12-year-old Kimberly Leach in Lake City, Florida.

But Bundy's killing spree finally ended when an officer in Pensacola made a traffic stop on a stolen vehicle.

Bundy was finally behind bars, exactly one month after the Chi Omega attacks in Tallahassee.

Debbie Touchton, the friend of Cheryl Thomas, says she worries people are becoming more careless as they forget about the attacks, and they need to be more cautious of their surroundings. In part 2 airing Monday, November 15 we'll look at Bundy's trial and how survivors are finding hope and healing.

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